The Animal Highlight

Eurasian boars are native to Singapore. These social and intelligent creatures are deeply woven into forest life in Singapore, but when they appear near footpaths, housing estates, and park edges, they can quickly become framed as a public safety concern. In this episode, we sit with that tension and ask what it reveals about coexistence in a city that is globally praised for biophilic design and urban biodiversity.

 Featured: 

• Rewilding in Southeast Asia: Singapore as a case study by Therese Lamperty et al.
• Cross-boundary subsidy cascades from oil palm degrade distant tropical forests by Matthew Scott Luskin et al. 
• Modeling Singapore's First African Swine Fever Outbreak in Wild Boar Populations by Rayson Bock Hing Lim et al. 
• Is killing animals an effective way to regulate populations? By Amy McDermott
• As Singapore culls ‘nuisance’ birds, rapid urbanization continues to fuel an avian boom by Robin Hicks
• African Swine Fever by Christopher Oura
• Pigs, viruses, and humans co-evolve in a deadly dance by Bettina Stoetzer
• Singapore’s Culling of Wildlife by Matthew Low
• Recent wild boar incidents in Singapore by Wallace Woon
• 19 wild boars in Bukit Panjang put down by Shabana Begum
• NParks studying sterilising otters by Ian Cheng
• Fences, grids put up at Zhenghua Nature Park to reduce human-wild boar encounters by CNA
• Bukit Panjang residents take extra precautions after second wild boar attack in two months by CAN
• Import of live pigs from Pulau Bulan not affected by African swine fever by CNA
• Season 5: Animals and Biosecurity on The Animal Turn 
• Hornbills as urban co-designers by Rebecca Shen on The Animal Highlight
• Wild Boars' Nuclear Turf War by Herre de Bondt on The Animal Highlight 
• Wild Boar Sounds & Calls by Wild Ambiance 
• Signal Group

Rebecca Shen joined The Animal Turn team in 2023 as a fellow interested in researching animals in design and podcast production. She is now an Assistant Content Producer and Designer. Rebecca is a landscape designer and researcher. She is inspired by design as pursuits of worldmaking, especially to advance interspecies justice and collectivity during times of challenge. Rebecca graduated with a Master in Landscape Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2023, where she completed her design thesis, Sanctuary State: California’s Cowscape in Transition. Through her design work, she explores human-animal relationships in the built environment, ecological restoration, and regenerative food systems.

Credits:

• Recorded: 4 August 2026
• Claudia Hirtenfelder: executive producer, editor and co-host 
• Rebecca Shen: script writer, narrator and co-host, episode artwork and logo
• Gordon Clarke: bed music
• Sound effects: BBC Sound Effects, CNA News, Wild Ambiance 

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The Animal Turn
The Animal Turn is the sister podcast to The Animal Highlight.

Culture and Animals Foundation
The Culture & Animals Foundation advances animal advocacy through intellectual & artistic expression

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

We follow koi fish from garden ponds to the global ornamental fish trade in Singapore, and we consider the impacts of treating these animals as “living jewels.” The episode discusses the social lives and vulnerability of Koi and raises bigger questions about the tensions between captivity and urban belonging. 

 Featured: 

• Otters eat up nearly 100 fishes at Church of St Teresa in 4 days, leaving fish trail behind by Alfie Kwa
• ‘It’s devastating’: Otters eat Bright Hill resident’s koi valued at under $10k by Calista Wong
• Koi Fish Personality and Behavior: How Well Do You Really Know Your Living Jewels? By Coospider 
• What a Fish Knows by Jonathan Balcomb 
• Pheromones in Aquatic Animalsby Ninan Jacob and Ramesh Jamnadas Padodara
• Koi (Cyprinus rubrofuscus) Seek Out Tactile Interaction with Humans: General Patterns and Individual Differences by Isabel Fife-Cook and Becca Franks
• The Development of Singapore’s Koi Aquaculture by Tai Wei Lim
• Ornamental Fish as Trans-Boundary of Viral Diseases by Ellen Ariel
• Global Ornamental Fish Trade Overview by VK Dey 
• An annotated Checklist of the Non-Native Freshwater Fish Species in the Reservoirs of Singapore by Heok Hee NG and Heok Hui Tan
• Wild caught ornamental fish: a perspective from the UK ornamental aquatic industry on the sustainability of aquatic organisms and livelihoods by Tracey A. King
• Marketing for Ornamental Fish Aquarium Seller’s Business Service by A Sankaran and A Selvarasu
• How Much Do Koi Fish Cost? By Kodama Koi Farm
• Japan’s King of Carp Breeds Million Dollar Koi Fish by Great Big Story
• Signal Group

 

 Rebecca Shen joined The Animal Turn team in 2023 as a fellow interested in researching animals in design and podcast production. She is now an Assistant Content Producer and Designer. Rebecca is a landscape designer and researcher. She is inspired by design as pursuits of worldmaking, especially to advance interspecies justice and collectivity during times of challenge. Rebecca graduated with a Master in Landscape Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2023, where she completed her design thesis, Sanctuary State: California’s Cowscape in Transition. Through her design work, she explores human-animal relationships in the built environment, ecological restoration, and regenerative food systems.

 

Credits:

• Recorded: 7 July 2026
• Claudia Hirtenfelder: executive producer, editor and co-host 
• Rebecca Shen: script writer, narrator and co-host, episode artwork and logo
• Gordon Clarke: bed music
• Sound effects: NParks, Japan King

 

Support the podcast via: 

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn 
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn 
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/ 

Send us Fan Mail

The Animal Turn
The Animal Turn is the sister podcast to The Animal Highlight.

Culture and Animals Foundation
The Culture & Animals Foundation advances animal advocacy through intellectual & artistic expression

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

In this episode we trace the conservation success story of Singapore’s otters and how their territorial claims to urban space raise important questions about ethics in a city shaped by people. We follow the Otter Wars, the role of citizen science, and the emerging push for population control as conflict among otters raises debates about the possible limits of coexistence. 

 Featured: 

• NParks
• The urban Smooth-coated otters Lutrogale perspicillata of Singapore: a review of the reasons for success by M. D. Y. Khoo and B. P. Y.-H. Lee
• Otters on National Library (NLB)
• Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park on National Library (NLB)
• Otter Watch on Facebook
• Otter City on Facebook 
• To help or not to help: Human intervention in otter family feud sparks online debate by Timothy Goh
• Marina otters move to Singapore River after losing their original home to rival Bishan familyby Zhangxin Zheng
• Love blossoms between a Bishan female otter and a Marina male otter despite territorial rivalry by Zhangxin Zheng
• 7 Zouk otters intrude 10 Marina otters' territory at Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park, fight ensues by Zhangxin Zheng
• Multispecies Commons with Marcus Baynes-Rock on The Animal Turn 
• Relocation of otters from Seletar was 'last resort' given the presence of pups and location of burrow: Experts by CAN
• Singapore: Man feared for life during otter attack on BBC
• NParks studying sterilising otters as part of long-term population control measures by Ian Cheng
• Lively Cities: Reconfiguring Urban Ecology by Maan Barua 
• Compassionate Conservation with Daniel Rampon The Animal Turn 
• Signal Group

 Rebecca Shen joined The Animal Turn team in 2023 as a fellow interested in researching animals in design and podcast production. She is now an Assistant Content Producer and Designer. Rebecca is a landscape designer and researcher. She is inspired by design as pursuits of worldmaking, especially to advance interspecies justice and collectivity during times of challenge. Rebecca graduated with a Master in Landscape Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2023, where she completed her design thesis, Sanctuary State: California’s Cowscape in Transition. Through her design work, she explores human-animal relationships in the built environment, ecological restoration, and regenerative food systems.

 Credits:

• Recorded: 30 June 2026
• Claudia Hirtenfelder: executive producer, editor and co-host 
• Rebecca Shen: script writer, narrator and co-host, episode artwork and logo
• Gordon Clarke: bed music
• Sound effects: BBC Sound Effects, Xeno-Canto

Support the podcast via: 

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn 
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn 
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/ 

Send us Fan Mail

The Animal Turn
The Animal Turn is the sister podcast to The Animal Highlight.

Culture and Animals Foundation
The Culture & Animals Foundation advances animal advocacy through intellectual & artistic expression

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

A lizard who looks like a small dinosaur steps out of the water a few metres from a footpath, and suddenly “urban nature” stops being an abstract idea. We’re talking about Singapore’s Asian water monitor, one of the island’s largest terrestrial predators and a surprisingly familiar neighbour in parks, wetlands, canals, and even near housing estates. We start with the honest reaction many people have, fear, then follow how that fear can turn into curiosity once you understand what these animals are doing in the city.

 Featured: 

• ACRES
• No need to be frightened of 'timid' monitor lizards in urban areas, say wildlife experts by CAN
• Water brings life to Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park by State of Green 
• Multispecies Commons with Marcus Baynes-Rock on The Animal Turn 
• Unveiling the urban colonization of the Asian water monitor (Varanus salvator) across its distribution range using citizen science by Álvaro Luna​ and Armand Rausell-Moreno
• The Water Monitor Complex, an Introduction by Tetzoo
• Notes on the burrows of the water monitor lizard, Varanus salvator by Carl Traeholt
• Garbage appeal: Relative abundance of water monitor lizards (Varanus salvator) correlates with presence of human food leftovers on Tinjil Island, Indonesia by Linda Uyeda
• How water monitors, or ‘kabaragoya’, can help locate dead bodies by The Morning 
• A global assessment of reptiles in the skin trade by Timothy J Colston et al.
• Coordinated raids by NParks target illegal wildlife trade across Singaporeby NParks
• Two Lizards Battle For Food by National Geographic 
• The Eye of the Crocodile by Val Plumwood
• Signal Group

Rebecca Shen joined The Animal Turn team in 2023 as a fellow interested in researching animals in design and podcast production. She is now an Assistant Content Producer and Designer. Rebecca is a landscape designer and researcher. She is inspired by design as pursuits of worldmaking, especially to advance interspecies justice and collectivity during times of challenge. Rebecca graduated with a Master in Landscape Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2023, where she completed her design thesis, Sanctuary State: California’s Cowscape in Transition. Through her design work, she explores human-animal relationships in the built environment, ecological restoration, and regenerative food systems.

 Credits:

• Recorded: 23 June 2026
• Claudia Hirtenfelder: executive producer, editor and co-host 
• Rebecca Shen: script writer, narrator and co-host, episode artwork and logo
• Gordon Clarke: bed music
• Sound effects: Epidemic Sound, National Geographic 

 Support the podcast via: 

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn 
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn 
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/ 

Send us Fan Mail

The Animal Turn
The Animal Turn is the sister podcast to The Animal Highlight.

Culture and Animals Foundation
The Culture & Animals Foundation advances animal advocacy through intellectual & artistic expression

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

A wild bird disappears for 140 years, then returns to one of the most urbanised places on Earth, not by accident, but because a city changes its mind about what nature is allowed to be. That’s the story we’re starting with as we launch a Singapore-focused season with landscape designer and artist Rebecca Shen, whose CAF-funded Atlas Animalia project maps the real, messy relationships between animals and urban life.

 Featured: 

• Rebecca's Hornbill Map
• Singapore Hornbill Project
• Devoted Hornbill Delivers Food to Mate by Planet Earth III, BBC Earth 
• The Ecology and Conservation of Asian Hornbills by F. Margaret et al. 
• Hornbills are more like us than you may think! By Ariana Loehr
• Land use and oriental pied-hornbill occurrence in Singapore by Zaheedah Yahya et al. 
• Signal Group

Rebecca Shen joined The Animal Turn team in 2023 as a fellow interested in researching animals in design and podcast production. She is now an Assistant Content Producer and Designer. Rebecca is a landscape designer and researcher. She is inspired by design as pursuits of worldmaking, especially to advance interspecies justice and collectivity during times of challenge. Rebecca graduated with a Master in Landscape Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2023, where she completed her design thesis, Sanctuary State: California’s Cowscape in Transition. Through her design work, she explores human-animal relationships in the built environment, ecological restoration, and regenerative food systems.

Credits:

• Recorded: 16 June 2026
• Claudia Hirtenfelder: executive producer, editor and co-host 
• Rebecca Shen: script writer, narrator and co-host, episode artwork and logo
• Gordon Clarke: bed music
• Sound effects: Epidemic Sound, BBC Sound Effects, Planet Earth III BBC, Pixabay, Xeno-Canto

Support the podcast via: 

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn 
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn 
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/ 

Send us Fan Mail

The Animal Turn
The Animal Turn is the sister podcast to The Animal Highlight.

Culture and Animals Foundation
The Culture & Animals Foundation advances animal advocacy through intellectual & artistic expression

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

Herre de Bondt and Rebecca Shen are back on the show to discuss Rosa Dyer’s season “Animal Collections/’Objects”. We delve into some of the key themes and tensions to emerge in the season including questions of value, colonization, ethics, and practices of preservation. We revisit a season that follows birds, bodies, and objects across museums and beyond, asking how ethics, beauty, and decay shape what gets collected, displayed, and believed. The talk moves from drawers of parrots to a living hippo, mapping the gap between preservation and care. 

• Natural history Museum in London
• Smithsonian Museum
• Pitt Rivers Museum
• Re-Animalization with Krithika Srinivasan on The Animal Turn
• Animals and Waste with Herre de Bondton The Animal Highlight 
• The Complex Relationship Between Humans and Baboons by Claudia Hirtenfelder
• The Lion’s Historian by Sandra Swart 
• Media Analysis of Racism and Speciesism (MARS) test finds Oscars so AnthropoScenic in contemporary animated films by Natalie Khazaal, Ellen Gorsevski, and Tobias Linné 
• Animals and Media on The Animal Turn
• Animapolis

  

Credits:

• Recorded: 10 June 2025
• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host 
• Rosa Dyer, script writer, narrator and co-host
• Rebecca Shen, episode artwork and logo, guest
• Herre de Bondt, guest
• Gordon Clarke, bed music
• Learn more about the team here. 

 

Support the podcast via: 

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn 
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn 
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/ 

Send us Fan Mail

The Animal Turn
The Animal Turn is the sister podcast to The Animal Highlight.

iROAR Network
iROAR brings together podcasts that aim is to make the world a better place for animals.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

Rosa questions whether zoos could be thought of as “living collections” that objectifying animals in ways that are similar to the animal objects one finds in a museum or archive.  She considers the internet sensation Moo Deng and asks whether her fame as achieved much in the way of the conservation goals for pygmy hippos. 

• Meet Moo Deng, the baby pygmy hippo taking the internet by storm by The Today Show. 

Credits:

• Recorded: 3 June 2025
• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host 
• Rosa Dyer, script writer, narrator and co-host
• Rebecca Shen, episode artwork and logo
• Gordon Clarke, bed music
• Other sound effects from The Today Show
• Learn more about the team here. 

 

Support the podcast via: 

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn 
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn 
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/ 

Send us Fan Mail

The Animal Turn
The Animal Turn is the sister podcast to The Animal Highlight.

iROAR Network
iROAR brings together podcasts that aim is to make the world a better place for animals.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

Rosa returns to feathers in this episode, this time to discuss the infamous 2009 “feather heist”, in which Edwin Rist stole an invaluable collection of bright-coloured feathers from tropical birds. She uses the heist to open a deeper consideration of the value of feather collections for science and the ethics of collecting and maintaining such collections. 

•  Pitt Rivers Museum
• Smithsonian
• Natural history Museum in London
• The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson

 

Credits:

• Recorded: 28 May 2025
• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host 
• Rosa Dyer, script writer, narrator and co-host
• Rebecca Shen, episode artwork and logo
• Gordon Clarke, bed music
• Other sound effects from Pixabay, Epidemic Sound, and Freesound
• Learn more about the team here. 

 

Support the podcast via: 

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn 
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn 
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/ 

Send us Fan Mail

The Animal Turn
The Animal Turn is the sister podcast to The Animal Highlight.

iROAR Network
iROAR brings together podcasts that aim is to make the world a better place for animals.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

In this episode Rosa steps away from feathered objects to consider how museum collections and archives should be thought of as living ecosystems. She discusses how webbing clothes moths are understood as ‘pests’ and some of the strategies curators are trying to employ to manage them: including sexual confusion and the introduction of parasitoid wasps. 

• Pitt Rivers Museum
• Oxford University Natural History Museum
• National Trust launches pest-control trial combining wasps and moth pheromones
• The Lion’s Historian by Sandra Swart

 

Credits:

• Recorded: 28 May 2025
• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host 
• Rosa Dyer, script writer, narrator and co-host
• Rebecca Shen, episode artwork and logo
• Gordon Clarke, bed music
• Other sound effects from Bill Hayes - I Know an Old Lady (Archie Bleyer, Internet Archive)
• Learn more about the team here. 

 

Support the podcast via: 

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn 
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn 
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/ 

Send us Fan Mail

The Animal Turn
The Animal Turn is the sister podcast to The Animal Highlight.

iROAR Network
iROAR brings together podcasts that aim is to make the world a better place for animals.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

In this episode Rosa focuses on the Oxford Dodo, attempting to trace the life history of a bird whose only trace is a fragile head and foot in the Oxford University of Natural History. She unpacks some of the competing routes the bird might have taken – from being hunted and shipped from Mauritius to being kept in an urban menagerie. She also follows the afterlife of the museum object itself once again raising questions about the interconnections between power, possession, and knowledge. 

• Pitt Rivers Museum
• Oxford University Natural History Museum
• Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland
• The Tradescants
• Murder most fowl: Oxford dodo 'shot in the back of the head'

 

 Credits:

• Recorded: 16 January 2024
• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host 
• Rosa Dyer, script writer, narrator and co-host
• Rebecca Shen, episode artwork and logo
• Gordon Clarke, bed music
• Other sound effects from Alice in wonderland Soundtrack, Epidemic Sound, Pixabay
• Learn more about the team here. 

 

Support the podcast via: 

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn 
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn 
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/ 

Send us Fan Mail

The Animal Turn
The Animal Turn is the sister podcast to The Animal Highlight.

iROAR Network
iROAR brings together podcasts that aim is to make the world a better place for animals.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook.